Acting
Dee Dee Bridgewater
Born 1950-05-27 · Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Dee Dee Bridgewater (born Denise Garrett, May 27, 1950) is an American jazz singer and actress. She is a three-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, as well as a Tony Award-winning stage actress. For 23 years, she was the host of National Public Radio's syndicated radio show JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater. She is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization. Born Denise Eileen Garrett in Memphis, Tennessee, she was raised Catholic in Flint, Michigan. Her father, Matthew Garrett, was a jazz trumpeter and teacher at Manassas High School, and through his playing, she was exposed to jazz early on. At the age of sixteen, she was a member of a Rock and R&B trio, singing in clubs in Michigan. At 18, she studied at Michigan State University before she went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With the school's jazz band, she toured the Soviet Union in 1969. The next year, she met trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, and after their marriage, they moved to New York City, where Cecil played in Horace Silver's band. In the early 1970s, Bridgewater joined the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra as lead vocalist. This marked the beginning of her jazz career, and she performed with many of the jazz musicians of the time, such as Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Max Roach, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Wayne Garfield, and others. She performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1973. In 1974, her first solo album, entitled Afro Blue, appeared, and she performed on Broadway in the musical The Wiz. For her role as Glinda the Good Witch she won a Tony Award in 1975 as "Best Featured Actress", and the musical also won the 1976 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album. She subsequently appeared in several other stage productions. After touring France in 1984 with the musical Sophisticated Ladies, she moved to Paris in 1986. The same year saw her in Lady Day, as Billie Holiday, for which role she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award, as well as recording the song "Precious Thing" with Ray Charles, featured on her album Victim of Love. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she returned from the world of pop and contemporary R&B to jazz. She performed at the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy and the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1990, and four years later, she finally collaborated with Horace Silver, whom she had long admired, and released the album Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver. She also performed at the San Francisco Jazz Festival (1996). Her 1997 tribute album Dear Ella won her the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album, and the 1998 album Live at Yoshi's was also worth a Grammy nomination. She performed again at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1998. She has also explored on This Is New (2002) the songs of Kurt Weill, and, on her next album J'ai deux amours (2005), the French Classics. ... Source: Article "Dee Dee Bridgewater" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Acting credits
10.0Raoul Peck directed this French-German-Haitian drama set in Manhattan where medical examiner Chase Dellal (Geno Lechner) isn't happy with the diminishing aspects of her life: Not only does she face political pressures to soft-pedal her testimony, her marriage to a judge (Bob Meyer) is collapsing. Suddenly, new options appear after deposed Haitian politician Dimitri (Jean-Michel Martial) re-enters her life. Playwright Israel Horowitz has a role in this film as morgue cop Timothy.
It's Not About Love
1998
6.7A mute alien with the appearance of a black human is chased by outer-space bounty hunters through the streets of Harlem.
The Brother from Another Planet
1984
6.0"Everybody Rides the Carousel" invites the viewer along on eight "rides" through the different stages of life. Based on the work by Erik Erikson, one of the most influential psychoanalytic theorists of this century, the film explores the inner feelings and conflicted emotions experienced during each stage of personality development. With distinctive and poetic animation, John and Faith Hubley visualize the conflicts, joys, problems and delights we all experience on the carousel of life.
Everybody Rides the Carousel
1976
4.5No synopsis available yet.
Dee Dee Bridgewater - Jazz in Marciac
2014
5.6The Pittsburgh basketball team is hopeless. Maybe with the aid of an astrologer, and some new astrologically compatible players, they can become winners.
The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh
1979
NRSarah Brightman, Tom Jones, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Bryan Adams and Dionne Warwick lead a stellar lineup for the ultimate Christmas concert – A Musical Christmas from the Vatican. This diverse program of traditional Christmas and spiritual songs, filmed at the Papal seat of the Roman Catholic Church, brings the esteemed Natale in Vaticano (Christmas at the Vatican) concert tradition to audiences outside Italy for the first time since the annual Christmas Eve broadcast began in 1992. With the backdrop of the Vatican at the height of Christmas festivities, exquisite lighting, and an international cast that had to meet the strict standards of approval of the Foreign Minister of the Vatican, A Musical Christmas from the Vatican is a concert like no other.
A Musical Christmas from the Vatican
2001
6.2The Daltons have escaped to New York, where their accumulated loot is hidden in the carts of Monsieur Pierre's group of honest, naive European immigrants, who naively bought land in California from Crook, who inserted a clause they must claim it within 80 days. Joe emotionally blackmails Luke to guide them there, hoping to escape on the way. The usual route must shortened from 6 to 2 months, so no danger can be avoided. Given Lucky's reputation, Crook decides to shadow them to add sabotage, just to be sure- or is it?
Go West: A Lucky Luke Adventure
2007
NRThe Drum Waltzes explores the life and music of legendary drummer, activist Max Roach, his creative peaks, personal struggles and re-inventions from the Jim Crow to Civil Rights eras, from heady days of post-war jazz to hip hop and beyond.
Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes
2023
7.5Elizabeth and Lauren are two Bakersfield housewives who volunteer to help the local police by working with crime victims to help catch criminals.
Night Partners
1983
5.8No synopsis available yet.
Dee Dee Bridgewater - Live in Antibes & Juan-Les-Pins
2010
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Jazz Open Stuttgart 2017 - Festival of World Stars and Child Prodigies
2017
NRBack in 2017, at the Jazzopen Stuttgart Festival, the great Quincy Jones put on a show that elicited many rapturous standing ovations from the capacity crowd. To kick things off, the seventy musicians of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and the SWR Big Band step out onto the stage. It is a warm summer’s evening and they play a grand opening medley in the fading light that seamlessly blends classic jazz with Michael Jackson numbers like “Wanna Be Startin Somethin.”
Quincy Jones & Friends - Live at Jazz Open Stuttgart
2017
8.0A documentary about the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-1959). There exist many myths and legends about the Jazz Singer Billie Holiday — one of the greatest voices of the last century. Most of them tell the story of the tragic victim of drugs, alcohol, men, color, or the circumstances of her upbringing. To some extent she contributed herself to these legends, especially in her autobiography "Lady Sings the Blues". In recent years, more and more records and reports have shown a different picture of her. These statements of confidants, colleagues and friends clean up with many of the legends and show a strong personality who has been anything but a pitiable victim. Billie Holiday was a strong-willed and determined person and a very complex personality who did not correspond to the classic victim type.
Billie Holiday: A Sensation
2015
8.0Ella Fitzgerald's voice is a phenomenon and unrivalled to this day. She had the perfect pitch and perfect intonation. Ella's voice spanned three octaves, her phrasing seemed effortless. There is almost no style of music, in which she did not excel, and her numerous - now legendary - recordings of the 'Great American Songbook' with pieces of US composers such as George and Ira Gershwin, Harald Arlen, Cole Porter or Duke Ellington, remained a benchmark for the "right" interpretation of those songs for generations of singers. In the film the focus will be on the voice of Ella Fitzgerald. We want to unravel the secret of her voice through many different people (musicians, singers, critics etc.), who will tell about what impact her voice had on them and still has. We want to learn more about Ella´s life to find out what made her sing like she did and only she could.
Pure Love: The Voice of Ella Fitzgerald
2017
NRThis All-Star Global Concert at the White House features performances by Joey Alexander, Terence Blanchard, Kris Bowers, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Terri Lyne Carrington, Chick Corea, Jamie Cullum, Kurt Elling, Aretha Franklin, Robert Glasper, Buddy Guy, Herbie Hancock, Zakir Hussain, Al Jarreau, Diana Krall, Lionel Loueke, Hugh Masekela, Christian McBride, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Marcus Miller, James Morrison, Danilo Pérez, Rebirth Brass Band, Dianne Reeves, Lee Ritenour, David Sanchez, Wayne Shorter, Esperanza Spalding, Sting, Trombone Shorty, Chucho Valdés, Bobby Watson, Ben Williams and more.
Jazz at the White House
2016
NRA comprehensive history of European Jazz, exploring the origins of the US-influenced Jazz clubs after the Second World War, the first steps independent of American jazz and the various changes of direction that have repeatedly occurred in European jazz in the search for that "own voice" that European jazz musicians have helped to form. Featuring the great masters of European jazz such as Chris Barber, Jan Garbarek, Juliette Gréco, Stefano Bollani and Till Brönner, to name but a few.
Play Your Own Thing: A Story of Jazz in Europe
2006
6.5This program features a live concert performance by jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater including such songs as This Is New and Lost in the Stars.
Dee Dee Bridgewater Sings Kurt Weill Live At North Sea Jazz Festival
2004
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Dee Dee Bridgewater "Motherland"
2007
In 2001, twelve singing divas from all over the world gathered in Taormina, in the world-famous Greek amphitheater. Under the direction of André Heller, they let their unique voices ring out in the magically illuminated venue. This "festival of the last prima donnas" included, among others, the American star soprano Jessye Norman, the "Voice of Africa" Ami Koita, the jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, hailed as the "new Ella Fitzgerald," as well as the highly successful Israeli pop singer Noa and her Arab-Palestinian counterpart Amal Murkus, the "Piaf of the Gypsies" Esma Redzepova, and the reincarnation of Naples music, Lina Sastri.
Im Herzen des Lichts – Die Nacht der Primadonnen
2002
4.8No synopsis available yet.
Dee Dee Bridgewater - Jazz Open Stuttgart
2013